Revisiting those 24 Statements Made With Extreme Confidence
The original predictions.
Brandon Rahbar
1. Shai Gilgeous-Alexander will be an All-Star again.
Picking a dude coming off a season finishing 1st Team All NBA and #5 in MVP voting to make the All Star game looks like a layup in hindsight. June 2024 me is so disappointed in October 2023 me for not predicting Shai as an All-Star
starter.
1/1
2. Vasilije Micic will be named a Rising Star.
Okay I admittedly predicted this for the punchline that he’d be a 30-year-old Rising Star. But I woulda nailed this had Vasa played with the Hornets all season.
1/2
3. Jalen Williams will be OKC’s second leading scorer this season.
JDub was not only OKC’s second leading scorer this season with 19.1 points per game… but the man was the most lethal 4th quarter scorer in the entire league.
2/3
4. Davis Bertans will lead the Thunder in three-pointers attempted per minute.
I know I could verify this via 5 minutes of research and 10 minutes of math, but I’m gonna save myself the 15 minutes because I know what I saw every time this man stepped on the court. I’m taking that point.*
*Editor's note: OVERRULED. Lindy Waters played way more than Bertans and still took more threes per-36 than the Latvian chucker (10.9 to 9.5).
2/4
5. Cason Wallace will make Thunder fans forget about Gradey Dick.
Ahh remember the handwringing over OKC passing up Dick, Cam Whitmore and Kobe Bufkin? Well, that’s turned into handwringing over OKC passing up Dereck Lively! (But really, what a great pick.)
3/5
6. Lu Dort’s shot selection will be improved this season.
Dort talked about better shot selection in the 2022-2023 exit interview and talked about it again in the 2023-2024 preseason presser. He seemed so adamant about it that he made me a believer. Luguentz is a man of his word.
4/6
7. Chet Holmgren will hit more 3s in his first game than former Thunder centers Kendrick Perkins and Steven Adams combined to make for their OKC careers.
Chet 3-pointers in his debut game vs the Bulls: 2. Adams and Perk combined 3 -pointers in their career: 1. Hey, that’s the same number of points* I get for this prediction!
7/7
*Editor's note: SUSTAINED. Three-pointer predictions are now worth three.
8. Aaron Wiggins will continue to save basketball.
Hands down the biggest gimme in this entire exercise.
8/8
9. Josh Giddey will double his free throw rate.
Giddey spoke many times in the offseason about getting to the free throw line more being his biggest focus and it showed in FIBA and preseason. It didn’t happen, of course.. but to be fair, the entire NBA’s free throw rate went down.
8/9